


All is One and One is All

by godtiermeme



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Guardian Angels, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-08 02:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4287693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godtiermeme/pseuds/godtiermeme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave Strider and Karkat Vantas are about as different as you can get. In fact, they're over a century apart in age. Karkat Vantas was born in 1994; Dave Strider, in 1846. Still, they're both dead. Aside from that, they're both guardian angels. Yet, by some strange twist of fate, they end up guarding a pair of siblings. Specifically, a certain boy by the name of John Egbert and a certain girl named Jade Harley.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 精 : Essence

Karkat Vantas was never exactly a person anyone would classify as one of the popular kids. He wasn’t exactly an intimidating person, either. Rather, he was a short, thin kid known to have a bark far worse than his bite. He was the son of a son of a modestly successful Indian immigrant. He was a loud, foul-mouthed “brat” to adults and a general annoyance to all but a handful of his high school classmates.

Then, at some point during his sophomore year, he was diagnosed with cancer. After that, he spent a majority of his time reading trashy romance novels whilst in the cancer treatment ward. And he did that for almost two years before he actually died.

But, at the time that this story begins, he didn’t know that much. All he knew was that he woke up in his usual hospital room with a vague memory of some sort of strange experience. A bargain of sorts. He recalled promising that he’d protect his long-time friend, John Egbert, in exchange for being able to freely roam the world until John kicked the bucket. He knew he didn’t feel anywhere near as crappy as he had for the latter portion of his life and that his former health issues had disappeared.

Looking around, he found that his old room was unusually empty. In fact, his bed was, too. The sheets were spread smoothly across the mattress and all the bent get well cards from the few friends he’d made in high school had been cleared away from the bedside table. Aside from that, a man with a red and white baseball shirt, jeans, and outrageously outdated Ray-Ban shades leaned casually against the wall. Some of his golden-blond hair hung in his pale face, upon which was spread a cocky grin.

Still, it seemed otherwise normal. The view through the window was still the shitty eyeful of parking lot. Outside the door, he could still hear the usual bustle of hospital life. And, so, he assumed that he had just woken from some sort of wonderful nap. Or, maybe, he’d gone for a walk around and gotten himself stuck in the wrong room. A room that just so happened to be occupied by a jackass with an unbearable shit-eating smirk.

He sighed, glanced towards the smug douchebag with his shoulder against the wall, and began, “Hey, um, you know what room number this is?”

No reply.

Karkat let forth a quiet huff of frustration. “You. Paper white jackass with the shitty smile. Where the fuck are we?”

The blond, in return, shrugged. His grin turned into an almost unnatural smirk. “Room 325. Pediatric cancer ward. Why?” he muttered in reply.

“Because… Wait… You’re fucking positive that’s the room number?” Karkat frowned. His brow furrowed thoughtfully. “I… Who are you? Why the fuck have I never seen you before?”

“Well, for one thing, I’m pretty sure you’ve never met me before. But I’ve met you.” Here, he paused. He sighed. “That sounded creepy, didn’t it? Oh shit. That sounded so, so damn creepy. Sorry about that.” A small frown punctuated his statement. He ran his fingers absentmindedly through his hair as he continued, “Anywho, I’m Dave Strider. And I’ve been dead for about a hundred or so years, so you probably don’t actually know me. But I had a hunch that you’d pop up here, so I figured I might as well do a good deed and wait for you to get zapped back to this shithole planet.”

“I don’t have the tiniest inkling of what the fuck you could possibly be attempting to tell me right now,” Karkat grumbled. “Besides, you look exactly like some douchebag high school kid who never got over the 90’s.”

“Really?” inquired the odd blond—the enigmatic Dave Strider. “That’s a new one. Never heard that before.” He folded his arms across his chest and breathed a quiet chuckle to emphasize his point.

Karkat, however, wasn’t taking the whole issue so lightly. “That didn’t even come fucking close to answering even a tenth of my questions,” he snapped. He paused, rolled his eyes, and threw his hands into the air as he further exclaimed, “Fuck it. Just fuck it. I’m out. And if I were you, I’d leave before the hospital security comes for your unbearably smug ass.” With another huff of indignant frustration, he turned around and marched purposefully to the door. He went through the usual motions of opening it—reaching out, grabbing the handle, and pushing it downwards—before simply passing through it. And, as he emerged into the hallway, he found the same smirking blond leaning against the wall opposite the door.

Of course, it was only natural for such a sequence of events to further confuse the already befuddled young man. “I… What…?  You were just…” he stammered.

“Mhm.” Dave’s smirk grew wider. He nodded slowly.

In the short span of time between his own incoherent muttering and the Dave’s reply, however, Karkat got another shock. He caught sight of himself reflected in one of the convex security mirrors. He frowned and wandered closer, examining his own reflection. He ran his fingers through his thick, naturally messy black hair—something he hadn’t done for quite a while—and stared at his own medium brown skin. He found himself to be livelier in appearance—not quite as thin or frazzled. His lips weren’t as dry and cracked as he had grown accustomed to them being. Aside from that, he wasn’t wearing one of the five oversized outfits he’d brought with him to the hospital. Rather, he was wearing his favorite black turtleneck sweater—something knitted for him by his long-time friend, Rose—and his preferred pair of grey sweatpants. (Specifically, that meant the ones that were “the softest fucking things in the world.” The ones that were, apparently, “made of, like, goddamn angel wing feathers or some velvety soft shit like that.”)

And, as Karkat examined himself in the mirror, Dave added even more commentary. “Oh. You’ve noticed. Have to say, man, you look a whole lot better than you used to.”

Karkat ignored the compliment. He glared at Dave. “What the fuck is happening right now!? I’m dreaming, right? I’m fucking dreaming. This is one fucking fucked up dream. Oh my fucking god, someone wake me up. This whole thing is irrefutably bullshit.”

To this outburst, Dave replied with a shrug. He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his black jeans. “Sorry to say, pal, but you ain’t dreaming. Not anywhere near it. And I don’t really hate to be the person to break it to you, but you’re dead. You’ve been dead for, like, two days, dude.” Here, he paused. He rubbed the back of his neck. A sheepish smile crossed his face. “Actually, I was starting to think you weren’t coming back. Maybe you went into that gaping universal black hole of absolute death. But—”

“What the fuck do you mean ‘absolute’ death!?” snapped Karkat. “I mean, I’m not really surprised if I _am_ dead; but, I can’t be. I just…” A frustrated growl escaped him. He pulled at a strand of hair that hung down in front of his face. He sighed. “Okay. Fine. Fuck it. I probably am dead. I mean, I’ve known it was coming for the past umpteen months. But… Why am I still here? And who are you?”

“Dave Strider,” repeated the blond. “Said that much already, haven’t I? Also, here’s a nostalgic name drop for you, dude. I’m the guardian angel of a friend of yours, actually. Jade Harley? Yeah. Interesting gal.”

“So…” Karkat began, massaging his temples as he tried to think his way through the outlandish scenario he found himself in. “I’m, what? A ghost? An apparition? Some sort of disembodied fuck-bundle of energy from a formerly corporeal vessel?”

A shrug. Dave shoved his shades up with the tip of his thumb, providing a clear view of his furrowed blond brow. “I ain’t got a clue what the hell you’re babbling about now. But, no. I’m not a ghost. So, by extension, you and all the other fuckers who stuck around aren’t ghosts, either. No, dude. You’re cooler than a ghost. You’re a guardian angel. You get to hover over some mortal fucker’s shoulder and watch as they go about their asinine daily lives. At least, until they die.” He dropped his shades back into place and offered another small shrug.

“And then what?” mumbled Karkat.

“Well, then you can choose someone else or drift into the eternal abyss. Or whatever happens afterwards. I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”

“So, then, who the fuck am I guarding?”

“What’s the last name you remember?”

“John. My childhood friend…” Here, Karkat abruptly stopped. He stared at his newfound acquaintance with wide, somewhat concerned brown eyes. “You’ve got to be shitting me. I’m doomed to follow _that_ childish asshole around?”

“Hey, it was your choice, dude,” snickered Dave. “You made it. Not my fault.”

Karkat replied with a sigh. “Okay, then, so. What? You dead, too?”

Dave nodded. “I’ve been dead for a while. Again, dude, we’ve been through this. I died in 1864. Also, here’s a tip for you. You can change your outfit by just thinking about it. I like to keep myself on the cutting edge of fashion, personally.”

“You’re as much of a conceited asshole as you look,” breathed Karkat. Then, he paused. A thought occurred to him. “If I’m John’s guardian whatever, then why the fuck am I here?”

A shrug. “Don’t ask me. You get rebooted in the place you died. I had the pleasure of waking up in a sanatorium with some jackass coughing up blood all over my bedsheets, if it helps at all.”

Karkat nodded. He glanced at Dave out of the corner of his eyes. “I’m guessing you died of tuberculosis, then?”

“Pretty much,” hummed a surprisingly nonchalant Dave. “Like I said, I’ve been dead a while. It doesn’t bother me that much.”

Although Karkat noted that fact in the back of his mind, he dismissed it verbally. “Whatever. Great for you. Am I supposed to follow John or something? Where the hell is he?”

Dave responded with a smirk. He pressed his left hand against a framed picture of what Karkat assumed was some modern, abstract interpretation of a boat (at least, according to its title of _“Boat on a River_ , _”_ which was mounted beside it on a plastic placard). The clear glass faded and gave way to a watery, shimmering image of John and his sister, Jade, in a history class. As Karkat took this new information in, Dave continued, “They’re at school. It’s Tuesday. We can go sit in on this shit festival if you want. Just hop on through the frame. I wouldn’t recommend it, though. Class looks pretty boring today.”

“What about Jade? And John? Aren’t we supposed to be guarding them or something?”

“They’re not going to drop dead in a history class, dude,” snickered Dave. Once he’d finished laughing, he flashed a sly grin and pressed his hand to the glass once more. Again, the image faded. The former abstraction of a boat returned. “What you need right now is a walk and a crash course on being dead.”

“And I can’t get this from someone who’s less of a self-absorbed centuries-old jackass?”

Again, Dave laughed. He flicked his shades up to show off a quick wink before dropping them back into place. He grabbed Karkat by the shoulders and gave him a gentle shove towards the exit nearest exit sign. “Just go with it, dude. I’m trying to help.”

Seeing as he couldn’t think of a better option, Karkat obliged. He trudged forwards and through the doorway that led down the stairwell to the exit. He followed Dave through the landscaped garden behind the hospital and out into the busy street behind that. And, all the while, he listened to Dave’s mostly irrelevant nonsense.

Still, he had to admit, he learned something. At least, he thought he did. And, if he understood Dave’s nonsense correctly, he was aware of a few new things.

He, Karkat Vantas, was one of uncountable other guardian angels to mortals of the world. Unless he willed himself to be seen by humans—something he apparently wasn’t supposed to do on a regular basis—he was invisible. However, as evidenced by Dave’s reaction, other angels could see him.

As an angel, he had the power to teleport at will via portals or to sparingly manipulate the physical world which surrounded him. He could persuade fate to do certain small favors for John—apparently, his “charge,” but couldn’t bend the rules of what Dave referred to as “absolute fate.” Aside from that, there was one final power granted to him—the ability to manifest himself in the thoughts and dreams of his charge. And, considering the fact that he was dead and that John was a mass of tenuously contained emotions, he had a feeling that he’d have to use that power at least once.


	2. 神火 : Spiritual Fire

Despite living the last two years of his life with the ever-looming possibility of death and a general apathy towards the topic, there was one thing that Karkat Vantas never could bring himself to feel comfortable with—funerals. He hated them. He hated how tiny familial groups filed into funeral homes. How they all sat in lines of provided wooden chairs with their godawful sobbing. How their noses turned red from a perpetual overuse of tissues—something Karkat personally thought to be a bit overdramatic. And, naturally, he wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of his own funeral, either.

He positively dreaded the idea of his own funeral, really. So, he made sure to have a very clear outline.

His main request was that he be cremated. He’d never been particularly fond of how he looked; and, once his health started to reflect in his appearance, he hated his own image even more. Aside from that, he never really felt the need to take up an entire coffin-sized slot in a cemetery. By his own logic, he was a singular person with no noteworthy, globally significant impact. Why, then, should he waste all that valuable cemetery property?

Secondly, he was very particular about his designated speakers. He allowed his father and mother to speak, if they wished. (Though he didn’t expect them to. He figured they’d be far too emotional to do so.) Then, he’d carefully chosen a few friends. He chose John for their longstanding friendship and his emotional transparency; Jade, too, was chosen for similar reasons. Rose was given the honor of speaking for her eloquence and stoicism, as was Kanaya. Aside from them, however, he allowed only a small handful of others the right to speak.

The other arrangements were left to his parents’ and friends’ discretion. After all, he’d addressed his main concern—that weepy nurses and hospital volunteers would barge in with unnecessary commentary about their superficial impressions of him.  That, really, was what bothered him the most. He’d known he was dying for a while. That didn’t bother him a bit. No, what truly got under his skin was the notion that he could be presented as some sort of superficial fought-to-the-end type of supposedly inspirational hero.

All that said, however, the idea of witnessing his own funeral—even one so carefully planned and orchestrated—was understandably unnerving. Yet, there he was. Doing just that. He stood amidst a small circle of his tiny immediate family and his closest friends. Like them, he stared at the small pewter container that held what remained of his earthly remains. Unlike them, though, he felt nothing but a deep sense of discomfort. That a long-dead man by the name of Dave Strider just so happened to be leaning against the columbarium wall didn’t help things, either.

“So… That’s it? I’m officially dead now?”

Dave, in return, frowned. He set his shades atop his thick blond hair and quirked his brow. “You’ve been dead, man. You are already dead. I cannot stress that enough. _You. Are. Dead._ ”

“Yeah,” sighed a somewhat frazzled Karkat. “But… I mean. Now I’m deader than dead. I’m, like, officially, legally dead.” Having said this much, he paused. He glanced at his long-time friend John, whose face was buried into the thick fabric of Rose’s winter coat. Rose, he noted, was as stoic as he’d expected. “I mean… I’m officially buried. I just kind of assumed…”

As Karkat’s statement trailed off into silence, Dave offered a curt nod. “Yeah, it’s awkward. You only have to do it once, though.” A short, breathy laugh escaped him. He smirked and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Funny enough, we passed my stupid death rock on the way to your fancy newfangled granite wall.”

“We did?” In a way, Karkat was mildly interested. His main concern, though, was getting away from his own burial before John started his waterworks. “I always knew this place was old as fuck, but I didn’t think it was that old.”

Again, Dave breathed a snort of laughter. He shrugged and stepped away from the wall, wrapping his arm around Karkat’s shoulders as he continued, “Yeah. It is. Let’s get away from this goddamned bullshit.”

“I hate to agree with you, asshole, but I agree,” Karkat replied.

Then, in silence, the pair wandered through the modern tombstones. Most were flat—easy to cut grass around and inexpensive overall. A few of the more complex ones stood out but, as a whole, the only recognizable part of the cemetery was the historic section. And, not much to Karkat’s surprise, that’s where they went. And, there, they wound their way through crumbling stone monuments and sinking headstones. Weathered stone angels covered in black patina glared down at them as they neared one of the more iconic parts of the site.

A large stone cross atop a plain stone. It stood in the center of the historic part of the cemetery for, supposedly, hundreds of years. The remnants of some sort of meaningful epitaph remained at the base, though most of it had been rubbed off by time. Even so, the cemetery groundskeeper made sure that the bronze plaque affixed to the center of the cross’ base remained legible.

According to that plaque, roughly three hundred individuals’ ashes were interred beneath the massive stone marker. Dave, however, disputed the claim. “The place closed maybe fifty years after I died,” he explained to a dazed Karkat. “When I was there, they had a pretty decent record. Only ten people had those little wood markers outside. By the time they closed, it was around maybe two hundred. Nowhere near three hundred. Most people got claimed by family members.”

“And… You didn’t?”

Dave frowned. He glanced towards Karkat and shrugged. “I was raised by my older brother when our parents died. He couldn’t give less of a shit about me. He left me behind and fled the country to avoid the Civil War. Still managed to wind up in Gettysburg on the day of the battle, though. Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?” A somewhat melancholy sigh punctuated the statement as Dave nudged his shades back into place and glanced upwards at the crumbling cross. “I was number twelve, by the way. Some old guy was eleven.”

Karkat nodded. He, too, heaved a heavy sigh. “Oh,” was all he could manage to say. To be honest, he really had no idea what else he could’ve said. He’d had relatively a shitty family life; but, he wasn’t left in a hospital to get dumped into an unmarked grave.

Dave, however, was unperturbed by the issue. And it was sort of reasonable for him to be—he’d had nearly 150 years to mull over the topic. “Your charge, John? He used to watch some fucking strange television show and I think there was a line in it that I thought fit pretty well. ‘That’s rough, buddy.’ Yeah. That’s the one. It’s all a century behind me, though, so we can just talk about something more cheery.”

“Yeah,” Karkat murmured as he glanced towards Dave.

By then, his lips formed a dismissive but sheepish grin. He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. Clearly, he was finished with the topic.

So, out of courtesy and discomfort, Karkat steered the conversation in a new direction. “You said you can get into your... whatever the fuck you call them… Charges? Yeah. You can get into your charge’s dreams?”

“Yeah.” Dave drew his gaze away from the memorial. A smirk emphasized the cocky huff that followed. “Just touch their head while they’re asleep and you’re in. It’s all a bit weird and personal for me, but I’ll do it when I absolutely have to by obligation.”

“By obligation?”

“Yeah,” snickered Dave, as if everyone knew the rules of being an eternal ethereal being. “If your charge is under a whole shit-ton of emotional stress—and, as in your case, when your charge has to process the death of their guardian angel’s physical form—you have to comfort them.”

“But… He knows me?” insisted Karkat, who, despite his longstanding relationship with John, was having some second thoughts about the topic. “Won’t he…?”

Again, Dave laughed. He folded his arms across his chest and let a smug grin tug the edges of his lips upwards. “He’ll think it’s some sort of nice dream. He might not even remember it. But, you’re still obligated to fuck around in that dweeb’s mind.”

After heaving a heavy sigh, Karkat made his reply. “Okay. Fine. Just... I can’t believe I’m asking _you_ , but… If I fuck up miserably, can you pull me out or do some sort of angelic bullshit to save my ass?”

Dave nodded. His grin grew wider and his demeanor cockier. “I’m not supposed to do it, but I know a few ways to trick the system. I’m not the oldest guardian angel around, now. But I know some tricks.” He punctuated this with a quiet hum of self-satisfaction.

From there, the rest of the day went as smoothly as it could have possibly gone. Both Dave and Karkat followed their respective charges back to the Egbert household. Then, after no more than ten minutes of pathetic sniffling from both Jade and John, they went their separate ways. Neither of them were up to sticking around two emotional wrecks for the whole day, after all. Dave wandered off to fuck-knows-where.

Karkat decided to walk through the town. He meandered aimlessly up and down the streets, looking into empty buildings and seeing his hometown in a way that he never had before. After being surrounded by the everyday rush of the town, he reveled in the silence that surrounded him when night fell. And he took in the sight of the stars above, many more of which were visible once the business district shut off most of their lights.

At some point, he passed by his old home. He glanced upwards, towards the second story window, and stared at the flickering light of his parents’ bedroom lamp. He mulled over going in to see what was happening; but, he quickly squashed the notion. He’d never been fond of his father and his mother was rarely ever home. Sure, he knew they cared for him. He, however, had never really found it within himself to care as much for them. And, for reasons he didn’t feel like getting into at the time, it was reasonable.

So, he left. He wandered further down the street and into the park, where he began to read some of the decades-old notices that had long since been forgotten behind the plastic that shielded the announcement board. He was just about to finish reading about the tulip garden that had opened in 1995 when a pale hand reached out of the glass and pulled him through it.

“Shit,” was the only word that escaped him as he tumbled back into the Egbert household—this time into the room of his friend, John. “Shit,” he repeated as he stared at a leering Dave Strider. And, finally, there came one last “shit” as he realized what was about to happen.

Dave, even so, jabbed his thumb in John’s direction. “I watched for you, jackass. He’s asleep now, so go in and do some comforting.” A wide grin belayed the fact that he knew that Karkat was already aware of the situation. His huff of laughter afterwards only cemented his image in Karkat’s mind—that of a smug blond whose sheer longevity made him superior to everyone else.

_A bastard,_ thought Karkat. _A self-absorbed fake with more ego than sense._


	3. 心神 : Spirit of Mind

“Okay, before you go in, we have to get a few ground rules laid out.”

Karkat nodded apprehensively. He stared at his own image, which was reflected in the mirrored blackness of Dave’s sunglasses, and sighed. “I thought we did that yesterday.”

“Technically two days ago.” For all the over-the-top conceit that Dave had been presenting over the past few days, the lack of any sort of sarcasm or smugness in his voice was unnerving. “But you can’t tell him anything. You can’t let him know what you are or that you even exist. Because, if you do, our asses are fucking screwed. Like, you know those stories about ghosts that are doomed to wander the earth with no purpose? That will be us. For eternity. Or, at least, it’ll be you. I’m not going down with your inexperienced ass.”

“Well, that’s a comforting thought,” Karkat grumbled under his breath.

“Look, dude, I’ve seen it happen. It ain’t pretty,” insisted Dave as he folded his arms across his chest. “Now, if you want me to, I can come into this dork’s dream with you and make sure you don’t break a rule or something.”

Karkat took a moment to mull the idea over.

On one hand, he wasn’t fond of having a complete stranger—a stranger that died over a century ago, in fact—messing around with his personal business with John. On the other hand, whatever the consequence of messing up was, it wasn’t lax. It was enough to make Dave drop his usual cocky tone.

“Fine,” he muttered under his breath. “Fine. Just… Let’s get this over with.”

Dave nodded. He wandered over to John’s bedside and leaned his shoulder against the wall. “Well, you go first.”

Karkat, too, nodded. He stepped forward and tentatively ran his fingers through John’s thick mop of black hair. And, as he did this, the world seemed to shimmer. A spark of light grew outwards from roughly the center of his vision and, after a brief moment, he found himself within what he could only assume was John Egbert’s mind. He found himself standing outside of the makeshift playhouse (although it was more akin to a shed) that John’s father had built in the family’s backyard. Through the dusty window, he could see John’s outline.

After another few seconds, Dave appeared to the right of the shed. He leaned his back against it and yawned before nodding his head towards the door. “Go on in, kid. It’s not my problem to deal with. It’s yours.”

“I wasn’t exactly asking for your opinion,” growled Karkat.

“Don’t really care,” shrugged Dave. “Now, get this shit over with.”

“Whatever.” With that said, Karkat strode purposefully towards the plain wooden door. He knocked on it tentatively. He waited for a reply. “Hey. Hey, dork. You in there?”

In response to the voice, the shadow behind the glass moved. Then, the door opened to reveal to Karkat a teen with light brown skin and oddly captivating blue eyes. A familiar, welcome reminder of his former existence whose hair was the color of the nighttime sky and whose toothy grin was the width of the entire goddamned galaxy. And, when he spoke, all Karkat heard was a voice whose familiarity made it less of a human voice and more a nostalgic reminder of his own past. “Karkat? That… You _are_ Karkat, right?” John muttered.

“Yeah, you fucking dweeb. What else would I be? Some sort of metaphorical apparition of your own godawful cinematic taste?” quipped Karkat.

John replied with a laugh. “You came all the way from the afterlife to shit on my taste in movies?” he snickered. “Dude, don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Not really. Besides, you have the great misfortune of being considered one of my close friends. I might as well come hang out with you for a while, right?”

(Dave, all the while, took in the events from his spot in the shadows. He marveled at Karkat’s ability to relate to his charge—something he’d long since forgotten how to do. And, yet, he also reassured himself that this ability of Karkat’s was nothing special. After all, the pair had known each other for nearly their entire lives. He would’ve gotten along just as well with someone he knew so intimately, wouldn’t he?)

“So,” John sighed, biting his lip briefly before continuing, “You here for one last long-winded speech or something? Am I in trouble for crying at your funeral?”

“Yeah. All of it. You’re going to dream hell right now.” After his own odd form of a joke, Karkat allowed himself the luxury of a quiet chuckle. Then, he shook his head and returned to as serious of a tone as he could manage. Although, knowing himself, he assumed it leaned more towards commanding or aggressive. "No. I just… You feeling okay?”

A small smirk lit up John’s features and revealed a pair of faint dimples—something that Karkat had noticed almost immediately after first meeting him. “I guess so,” he mused. “Just… It kind of sucks that you’re dead, you know?”

Karkat rolled his eyes and gave John a gentle shove. “I’m the one who’s dead, asshole. I’m the one who gets to say it fucking sucks and it fucking sucks. But, if it cheers you up any, you’re still three inches taller than me. You don’t even give me the benefit of the doubt when you’re fucking dreaming, John. That’s just pure evil.”

Despite the oddball nature of the comment, John returned with a snort of laughter. “Well, you’re louder than me, still, so that’s a plus, right?”

“Yeah.” Karkat paused. He noted that a light breeze seemed to have started rolling across the dreamscape. Something in the back of his mind started to urge him to hurry up. “So, you’re good?”

“About as much as I can be,” John reaffirmed.

A nod of approval. “Good. Then I’ll be going. You probably talked me to death. I don’t need to die in your fucked over labyrinth of a mind, too.”

“Yeah,” John shrugged. “That would kind of suck.” He sighed, lowered his gaze to the ground, and let his shoulders slump slightly as he continued, “You’ll visit again, right? You’re not just going to leave now?”

By this point, the breeze had started to speed up. Every source of light in the world that John had conjured within his mind began to shine with an otherworldly haze. “Of course I fucking won’t, you dork. I’ll be back next time you need me.” Karkat replied.

And, as it was, he replied just in time. As he finished, the hazy glow turned into an overpowering glare of white. Then, after a few seconds, it faded to reveal John’s usual room. Once again, Karkat found himself staring at a smug-looking blond with his arms folded across his chest. “What the fuck was that?”

“Dreams change. You’re allowed to enter exactly one when you go in. If the scenery or dreamed situation changes, you’re out. It’s like baseball. But without the three strikes.” Having said this much, Dave paused. He hummed a few notes of some unknown song to himself before shrugging and continuing, “No. It ain’t anything like baseball. I lied. I’m a liar. Zap me to hell.”

“You don’t fucking know how much I wish the universe would,” Karkat grumbled under his breath.

“Hm?” If Dave had heard the comment, he didn’t let it show. Rather, he looked absolutely clueless as he tipped his sunglasses upwards and glanced at Karkat. “What? You said something?”

“Not a fucking thing,” Karkat growled as he wandered off into the darkened hallway of his best friend’s home. At that point, he half expected Dave to follow him; but, even if that was true, he didn’t care. He went about his business as if he was alone—never once turning to check and see if Dave was behind him. And, in doing that, he failed to realize that he truly was alone.

Dave had left shortly after Karkat trudged off into the hallway.


	4. 閻羅王 : Yanluo

And, so, the next few weeks rolled by. Karkat found himself swept up into a world of mildly mundane existence as an ethereal being. He did little else besides follow his old friend around as he went about his daily life. Well, little else except for avoiding Dave Strider like the plague.

In a way, Dave Strider was also doing this. He avoided Karkat at all costs. After all, as he constantly reminded himself, everything is temporary. Karkat, like everyone else he had ever helped, would one day follow his charge into the great abyss and he’d be alone again. There wasn’t much of a point to him getting attached to him; all that would get him would be a future dose of loneliness. And he’d already felt that before. He felt it when his last guardian angel companion, an unconventional woman by the name of Terezi Pyrope, decided to follow her charge into whatever was beyond the realm of true death.

Yet, at the same time, Karkat’s inevitable departure wasn’t all that was worrying Dave. In fact, there was an even more pressing issue on his mind.

So, on a rainy day in early February, as he sat at the foot of the stone monument which marked the resting place of his corporeal remains, he pondered this problem. He stared vacantly at the clouds which meandered aimlessly across the sky and sent down a torrent of rain that he no longer felt nor really cared about.

“Have I been here too long?” he mused aloud. “Is it me? Is it the century and a half that I’ve been here?”

He sighed and watched as the falling rain passed through him. The stone on which he sat turned to that dark black color which it always did when wet, and the rain pooled in his place regardless of his presence. “I just don’t really care about things anymore,” he slowly admitted to no one in particular. “I just don’t want to die… Not yet…”

“Not ever,” a voice in the back of his mind pointed out.

“True,” he conceded. “But the world is so damned nice. It keeps going and advancing without me and it keeps getting better…”

“But you can always attain immortality. It’s within your grasp. It always has been,” chided a disembodied voice—a deep, foreboding voice, whose presence Dave had grown accustomed to in the last nearly fifty years of his existence as a being that was neither living nor dead. “All you have to do is give the world another wandering soul. Turn over the spirit that you are so stubbornly trying to help along his journey, and I will reward you with a place as an immortal guardian of Hell.”

Dave, in return, let forth a quiet sigh. “No,” he declared to the voice. “You’ve told me this for the last fifty fucking years and the answer is still ‘no.’ I ain’t about to give in to your godawful plan.”

“He is a weak soul, David. He’ll be of no use to you or to anything else so much as a fraction larger than himself. Release him from his mundane existence and you will be rewarded with something infinitely greater than the gross worth of his weak constitution.”

“Like hell I would,” Dave snapped. “Leave me the fuck alone, dammit.”

For a brief moment, the voice falls silent. Then, as if it was carried by the thunder which rumbled ominously in the distance, it spoke up once more. “Give me his pathetic life essence and I shall use it to forge for you a new life. I will grant you a new existence in a family that will love and care for you like your own family never did. From the embers of his weak soul, I will craft you the life you’ve always wanted. Or, perhaps, you want the power to connect with that poor excuse for a soul’s charge?”

Dave paused. He closed his eyes and tried to dissuade the lust that began to rise up from within him. “I don’t give a damn what you can give me, you fucking bastard!” he groaned. “I don’t want it! I don’t want a single damned thing you could ever possibly give to me. Not if… I…”

He buried his head in his hands. “If I help him, I’ll rise to the rank of Principality. I’ll be immortal and…”

“You won’t ever have this chance again, David,” interrupted the voice. “For the price of one useless soul, I can give you what you’ve always wanted. A family that loves you. A community that respects you. A life that will last longer than you can even possibly imagine. And, when it’s all through, I will accept you as an immortal agent. You shall have the freedom to roam the world as you please and do as you wish with all the powers you have now. All you need to do is turn over one puny soul.”

By this point, Dave found his willpower starting to give out. He felt his usual resolve crumbling and, as much as he liked to think that he would never consider doing such a thing, he found himself being drawn to the idea. “I’ve seen the world change into something I never could’ve imagined when I was alive,” he murmured, “I’ve lived this way for nearly a century and a half… What can you possibly offer me that I don’t already have?”

“The life you’ve always dreamed of,” the voice reminded him. “I can put the world at your fingertips. You can be the most powerful man to ever exist. You will have the family you’ve always wanted—one that will care for you and support you through your entire life. And, when you die, you will have all the power in the universe.”

“All I ever fucking wanted was one goddamned person who gave a shit about me…” Dave said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I… Please…” He squeezed his eyes shut again and took a deep breath. His fingers curled into fists as he forced out his reply, “I’m sorry… I’m so fucking sorry… I’ll do it. Just tell me what I need to do.”

A deep, rumbling laughter echoes in Dave’s mind. “You are a selfish coward, David.”

“I know I am,” he admitted.

“Raise the soul to be more powerful. Teach him to manipulate the world at his will and give him all the powers you have learned over the years. If you do this, his energy will be more than enough for me to sacrifice as the fuel from which I shall forge your new existence.”

“And what will happen to him afterwards?”

“His soul will be burned as coal on my forge. When its energy has been exhausted, he will become but another of many wandering ghosts.”

Dave nodded. He bit his lip briefly before letting forth a muffled sob of frustration. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I… It’s all I ever wanted. And I… I just want one more chance.”

“Do you agree to these terms?” asked the voice, now a bit more commanding than before.

“I agree,” whimpered Dave.

Another thunderous stretch of laughter greeted him. The voice once again chided him, “What a selfish, foolish soul you are. So willing to give up an innocent life to rebuild your own. I admire your brazen disregard for anyone but yourself. You, David, are the true epitome of cowardice.”

Again, Dave nodded. He choked back another sob. “I’m sorry, Karkat…”

“Then I, Hephaestus, ruler of the Forge of Hell, grant you your wish. You shall deliver to me a fully realized soul within the next five years, and I shall reward you with the earthly existence of your fantasies.”

Lightning ripped through the sky, piercing the darkness which had settled over the graveyard. Dave, meanwhile, remained where he was. He sat at the base of the crumbling monument, his head buried in his hands as he came to realize what he’d done.

 _I’m no better than my godawful brother,_ he thought. _I’m just as goddamned selfish and spineless as he was._

“Hey,” another voice—one that he neither wanted nor needed to hear at that moment—interrupted Dave’s thoughts. “Hey, jackass. You okay our here?”

He looked up and towards Karkat, who stood about two yards away from him, and bit his lip. “Yeah,” he lied. “I’m fine… How long’ve you been here?”

“About five minutes,” Karkat shrugged. He folded his arms across his chest. A small frown creeped onto his features, and his brow furrowed thoughtfully “So, anyways, I came here to apologize…”

“For what?”

“Being a fucking asshole. I mean, now that I think about it, you’re not all that bad. You’re pretty tolerable, actually. Surprisingly tolerable. And you seem like a decent enough guy…” Here, Karkat paused. He ran his fingers through his hair and heaved a heavy sigh before continuing, “I’m stuck with you for the next however many years, anyhow, so I might as well make an effort to get along with you.”

“Yeah…” Dave murmured. “I… I guess that’s a good point…”

“So, then, what do you say? Are you up for putting this infantile game of hatred charades behind us?”

Dave frowned. He glanced at Karkat’s outstretched hand and, with the deepest sense of self-disgust he’d ever felt in his life, he took it. “Sure,” he forced himself to say. “Why the hell not?”

And to this, Karkat replied with a sheepish half-smile. A sign of trust on his part, and yet another thing that added to Dave’s sense of self-loathing at that moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I decided to take a new approach to this. I'm still using the same basic ideas, but I'm switching to a more pseudo-religious approach to the matter. Also, yes, I made the devil Hephaestus for the sake of a shitty canon reference.


	5. 智 : Knowledge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess you can decide how much time passed but there's basically a maximum of two days between this and the last chapter.

If there was one thing that could take Dave’s mind off of a serious topic, it was his favorite season—winter. Well, that and the fact that he was just naturally forgetful. But, a snowstorm was a good distraction for him. Snow covered the ground and ice formed delicate patterns on glass windows. And, while these icy designs of nature were pretty, they were also useful.

“Basically, any sort of flat semi-reflective surface can be used as a portal,” he explained to Karkat. “Glass or glass-like material is preferred, but it’s not required. Ice is just as good as anything else to whip yourself up a universal shortcut.”

Karkat, in response to these statements, nodded skeptically. “Yeah,” he grumbled, “And I can sprout wings from my goddamned asshole and fly away from all this outrageous fucking lunacy.” To punctuate his statement, the skeptical guardian angel folded his arms across his chest and rolled his eyes.

Dave, however, remained undeterred. “No, dude, just listen. You’re… Um… How do I explain this…?  You sure as hell ain’t human anymore—”

“Thanks for pointing out the most blatantly obvious statement in history, you fucking twit.”

“You’re energy,” Dave persisted, “When you boil all the weird shit down, you’re basically the sum of your experiences. What you learned in life and who you were are being manifested on the same world you always knew, but on a slightly different realm.”

Again, Karkat nodded skeptically. “Maybe you are absolutely batshit. I mean, you’ve been around long enough for it to all get to your hollow skull.”

Dave sighed. He pulled off his shades and wiped them off on his shirt—an odd habit he’d picked up from Jade over the years. It didn’t do anything; his glasses were eternally spotless; but, somehow, he’d acquired the motion as an innate habit. “Okay, that ain’t doing any good. Let’s try it this way. You’re like a computer program. Each of your traits and memories are part of a file. One big, angry, digital collective folder named Karkat. And, when you died, that file was put in the recycling bin. It’s not being completely destroyed. It’s just somewhere else on the computer.”

“Hm.” Karkat mulled over the idea a few times before responding with a slow but understanding nod. “That actually made sense. Something that came out of your vile, shit-eating mouth _actually made sense_. This is new and different.”

Dave, too nodded, before pausing. “What were we doing?”

“You said you’d teach me how to do that weird shit you did with glass. Teleportation voodoo or whatever the hell you want to call it.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Dave smirked and grabbed Karkat by his wrist.

And, in that moment, what he didn’t realize was that Karkat was having some second thoughts about the idea. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to know how to do some fancy angelic tricks; rather, he was surprised to actually feel that touch. It was a surprisingly gentle grip—one that reminded him of the way John used to grab his hand when they watched movies together. And, in remembering John, he also dredged up some old feelings—feelings he wasn’t quite comfortable applying to some centuries-old crackpot guardian angel. But, he didn’t say anything.

So, without this knowledge, Dave was understandably surprised when that wrist pulled itself abruptly from his grasp. “What? You not a big touchy-feely guy? That’s cool. Just put your hand on the window. Like…” He paused, spread out the fingers of his left hand, and pressed the outstretched palm against the glass before continuing with a cocky grin, “Like this. And then it’s just a matter of thinking about where you want to go. Maybe I want to jack off in the lush Amazonian rainforest or something like that.”

“Yeah, and that’s fucking disgusting,” Karkat muttered. Yet, at the same time, he watched with honest amazement as what seemed to be a window straight to the aforementioned location appeared before him. Examining it closer, he realized that it started in the center; from there, it spread outwards. On the ice, he noted, it travelled along the lines of the layer of natural lace. And, then, he watched as Dave’s hand withdrew from the surface and as the image faded away.

“I’m a perverted bastard,” Dave laughed, unaware of the thoughts which were running through his fellow guardian angel’s head. “Now, you try it. Just think of something and…”

Karkat pressed his hand to the glass. He closed his eyes, concentrated, and opened them to find himself staring at an oddly familiar place—his own empty bedroom. And, as he looked at it, it dawned upon him that it had changed. All his belongings were stacked neatly in two small boxed tucked into the corner of the room. His bedsheets had been taken away and replaced with more generic ones; his photos and pictures taken down and packed in a clear box at the foot of the new bed.

“Where the hell is that?” muttered Dave.

Rather than bother answering, Karkat pulled his hand away from the window. “Nowhere,” he snapped. “It’s nowhere.”

“Whatever.” A long sigh escaped Dave as he pressed his hand to the window once more. This time, the icy pattern gave way to a crumbling stone building. “Anywho, I’m going on a walk. You can come if you want, but I ain’t gonna shoot you if you don’t.”

Karkat, in return, shrugged. He figured that there was little else to do and followed Dave through the newly created portal. And, as he emerged, he realized that he knew this place. It was, in fact, a historical landmark; albeit, it wasn’t one that was loved enough by the community to have any of its own dedicated restoration or conservation efforts applied to it. “This is the old hospital,” he said thoughtfully, “According to what I know, the place burned down years ago and most of it collapsed afterwards…”

“Yeah,” acknowledged Dave. “And, a while before it came crashing down like the massive stone trash pile it became, it was just thriving with tuberculosis. If you get what I’m throwing down, I mean…”

“I’m guessing you’re trying to say that you died here. I have to say, though, you’re doing it in the most impossibly roundabout and nonsensical way I could ever even fucking think of.” Karkat paused. He stared at the crumbling stone structure—two stories tall with the walls of three rooms per floor still fairly intact. The doors had all been taken or rotted away, and vines were beginning to overtake the graffiti-covered rooms. “So… You… Did you realize what happened when you came back?” he whispered nervously.

“Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t like I was expected to pull through.” Dave pushed his shades up so that they rested atop his head and stared absentmindedly at the sky. He chewed on his lip and buried his hands as deeply into his pockets as they could possibly go. “I mean, medicine wasn’t as good as it is now. I was damn well ready to just rip out my lungs before I kicked the proverbial bucket. So, when I woke up and didn’t feel so much as a hint of pain, it was pretty fucking obvious to me that I sure as hell wasn’t alive at that point.”

“Oh,” was all that Karkat could manage to say. What else could he have said? While he’d also been suspicious of how lively he had felt when he awoke, he had to admit that he’d probably never understand exactly what Dave went through. Likewise, he’d never really understand what the enigmatic blond’s life was like. So, instead, he shrugged. “So, you have any friends that you left behind?”

“Me?” Dave replied with a hint of shock. “Oh. No. I just left my brother. Funny enough, though, he managed to have offspring. And that offspring somehow spawned someone you ain’t too much of a stranger to.”

“You normally make no sense, but you’ve reached a new low,” grumbled Karkat. “Are you trying to say something worthwhile or are you just running your goddamned mouth to let out all the hot air imprisoned in your fucking skull?”

“Eh,” Dave shrugged. “Half an’ half. What I was saying, though, was that Rose is technically related to me.”

“Ew,” Karkat huffed. “How could Rose be related to _you_? She’s… Rose is actually a tolerable, intelligent person. And you’re… Well… You’re just fucking over-the-top obnoxious.”

“Thanks,” Dave shot back with a smile. He paused, glanced upwards, and sighed. “You ever look at the clouds and try and think of what they look like?”

Karkat replied with a smirk of his own. “No, because I have better things to do with my life.” He sneered. “But, if I have to… I say that one…” He jabbed a finger at a particularly odd cloud which was working its way across the sky. “That looks either an astoundingly large turkey with a regular sized boat stuck up its ass or a very small boat stuck up a regular sized turkey’s ass.”

“Interesting theory, kid.”

“Kid? I’m a few months older than you, you know.”

“No, you’re over a hundred years younger,” Dave shrugged. He glanced up at the sky once again and pointed towards another oddly shaped cloud. “Anyhow, I see the profile of Teddy Roosevelt.”

Karkat sighed. He blinked—partially to clear his mind and partially to try and figure out what the hell Dave was smoking to be able to see such a thing. “I’ll take your word for that one… Not that I actually give it or you any sort of substantial trust…”

“That’s fine.”

Again, Karkat shrugged. After a brief look around, he found a rather attractive tree stump in the shadow of the building. While he didn’t exactly feel tired, he didn’t like the idea of just standing around for the rest of eternity. So, he claimed the seat. He sat down in the grass and leaned his back against the remains of the former tree. “So, what? Are there any sort of innate universal constants I should know of? Ones you haven’t told me yet?”

“Not really,” replied the then-somewhat-nostalgic blond. “I mean, there’s a whole lot of philosophical bullshit that I’ve gathered up over time, but it isn’t anything groundbreaking.”

“Of course it’s not,” sighed Karkat, “Nothing that could possibly be excreted from the bowels of your bullshit mind even has the potential to be groundbreaking.” He ran his fingers through his hair, stared briefly at the sky, and began toying with a blade of grass. “But, no, I think you didn’t understand my question. What I was trying to ask was whether or not there was anything to do here. I mean, we can’t physically manipulate objects, can we? What the fuck are we supposed to do to get entertainment around here?”

“Nothing. Welcome to purgatory, you sinful bastard. Drop and give me one push-up for every sin you’ve ever thought of committing.” Satisfied with his own crude joke, Dave smirked. He chuckled quietly before retracting his former statement. “Really, though, there’s not much to do. Except maybe learn more about yourself.”

“That sounds like so much fucking fun. I just can’t wait to reach into the deepest depths of my personal hell and pry forth all the wriggling, filthy masses of godawful shit that I don’t give a damn about,” groaned Karkat. “Fictional angels are so much more interesting. They get wings and manipulative powers and physical forms and it’s all just fucking dandy…”

“Yeah, sorry to break it to you. There ain’t any sort of crazy heavenly war happening around here.”

“So you mean I get to spend all the time John has left on this godforsaken planet with _you_?”

“I sure do.”

Again, Karkat sighed. He rolled his eyes and folded his arms across his chest. “Maybe I’ll just push the damned kid into a speeding train and get the hell out of here.”

“Eh,” Dave shrugged, “Sounds like a decent plan.”

Karkat, in return, ignored the commentary. Rather, he focused all his attentions towards the clouds in the sky. He folded his hands behind his head, leaned a bit further back, and yawned.

In a way, he supposed that things could be worse. He could be stuck in some other odd out-of-body situation. He could be burning in hell. He could have been turned into some sort of bug. He could be waking up to the realization that his entire life was a dream.

Really, as much as he refuted it, he had a certain fondness for the cocky old spirit he’d woken up to. He did, in some odd way, enjoy the strange statements which were often spouted from his mouth at random; he liked not being the only one stuck in a frustrating situation. After all, he didn’t exactly have any sort of guidebook when he was alive. He didn’t have any form of useful guidance into how to deal with his situation. Now, though, he did. He had someone to at least show him how to do things; and, admittedly, he liked being shown around by some jackass than being left alone to find out exactly what types of things chemotherapy did to the human body.

**Author's Note:**

> Questions, comments, feedback, and concerns are all welcome! Thanks for reading! You can stay up to date on this and other fics of mine with [my blog](http://tennantstype40.tumblr.com)! Also, check out the tag, "fic: all is one" for updates! I hope you enjoy whatever the hell happens here. Also, yes, the title is from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood because I'm weeb trash AND Homestuck trash. I'm, like, all the trash.


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